21 Dead in Homs, Daraa as Syria Withdraws U.N. Rights Council Bid

Syrian security forces and unidentified gunmen killed at least 19 civilians on Wednesday, as authorities pressed a deadly crackdown on protest hubs across the country, human rights activists said.

Among the dead was an eight-year-old boy, the head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, Ammar Qurabi, told Agence France Presse.

Sniper fire killed 13 people, including the youngster, in the village of al-Hara, near the protest center of Daraa, south of Damascus, Qurabi said.

Tank fire killed five people in the Baba Amr district on the outskirts of the central industrial city of Homs. Another civilian died in Jassem, near Daraa, he added.

Two soldiers were killed and five others wounded in clashes with "armed terrorist gangs" in the protest hubs of Homs and Daraa, state news agency SANA reported.

The deadly confrontations occurred as troops and security forces "arrested dozens of wanted men and seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs" and in Daraa.

Earlier, a human rights activist said shelling and automatic weapons fire had rocked Homs, Syria's third largest city.

"This operation terrified residents and security agents took part in looting," human rights activist Najati Tayara told AFP, adding that 50 tanks rolled into the Sittin neighborhood.

Another activist spoke of "bodies sprawled on the streets in Baba Amr," adding that "no one dares retrieve them because of the snipers and the security forces."

The army also kept up its sweep of the flashpoint Mediterranean town of Banias, scouting for "protest organizers yet to be arrested," said Rami Abdul Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"A tank has been stationed since Tuesday night on the square where Banias demonstrations are held," he said, adding that the northern town remained encircled by the army after weekend arrests put some 450 people behind bars.

He said 270 individuals released after the arrest campaign had "signed an agreement to stop demonstrating" and that many of them had been "struck violently and insulted" by security forces.

Abdul Rahman also reported that one person died Wednesday in Banias of injuries sustained on Saturday.

Thousands of students demonstrated in Syria's second-largest city Aleppo before being dispersed by baton-wielding loyalist counter-demonstrators and security force personnel, a human rights activist said.

For almost two months, protests have railed against Assad's regime, while troops and security forces have violently repressed the uprising.

Between 600 and 700 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the start of the protest movement in mid-March, human rights groups say.

The government said it formed a commission to draft within two weeks a new law to govern general elections that meets "international criteria," SANA reported.

"Our goal is to draw up an electoral law that is similar to the best laws across the world," said Deputy Justice Minister Najm al-Ahmed.

Protesters are demanding free elections, the release of political prisoners, constitutional changes that would strip the ruling Baath party of its hegemony over Syria as well as new media and political parties laws.

Last month, under pressure from the international community, Assad lifted nearly five decades years of emergency rule but the heavy-handed crackdown on pro-reform protesters has continued unabated.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called on Assad to listen to his people.

"I urge again President Assad to heed calls for reform and freedom and to desist from excessive force and mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators," Ban said in Geneva.

Meanwhile, Russia on Wednesday rejected calls for a special U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria to condemn the crackdown, noting that the opposition was resorting to violence as well.

The comments by the Russian foreign ministry came amid mounting international pressure for the U.N. Security Council to respond to the crisis, with Britain leading efforts to get a resolution condemning Assad and his government.

Russia helped block last month's attempt by the Security Council to adopt a statement condemning the violence, and a source in the Russian foreign ministry said Moscow remained firmly opposed to any sanctions.

"The Security Council cannot discuss Syria. This is obvious," the foreign ministry official told the Interfax news agency.

Russia had previously called on both sides in Syria to begin negotiations and urged the ruling regime to press ahead with political reforms.

The Russian official also took the unusual step of criticizing the protesters' actions in an apparent hardening of Moscow's position.

"The opposition there (in Syria) was never peaceful to begin with," the Russian official was quoted as saying.

Also Wednesday, Syria withdrew a bitterly contested bid for a place on the U.N. Human Rights Council as it fought off growing international criticism of its deadly crackdown on protesters.

Kuwait will take Syria's place in an Asian group of nations nominated for places on the council.

Western nations had launched a major diplomatic push to block Syria's effort to get on the council, which one ambassador called "a provocation." Western powers are making a new attempt to get the U.N. Security Council to condemn Assad's campaign against opponents.

Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, portrayed the withdrawal as a straight swap with Kuwait, denying reports by diplomats of intense "political" pressure from Asian and Arab nations to stand down from the May 20 election.

Speaking after an Asia group meeting at the U.N. headquarters, Jaafari said Syria would take Kuwait's place in the next elections for the Human Rights Council in two years.

"It doesn't mean at all that any of us has withdrawn its candidacy," Jaafari said. "It is a sovereign decision based on the Syrian government's will to reschedule the timing of our candidacy, based on reconsidering our priorities."

Kuwait will join India, Indonesia and Philippines as the new Asian entrants on the council.

Under the U.N. resolution that established the Human Rights Council in 2006, member nations are expected to "uphold the highest standards" of human rights. "There was clearly some embarrassment about this because of the violence in Syria now," said one Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

France, Britain, the United States and other Western nations had lobbied hard against Syria -- particularly since the crackdown on opposition protests in which hundreds are believed to have been killed.

"This was an insane candidacy, an offense to human rights, a provocation," said France's human rights ambassador Francois Zimeray, who had taken part in international lobbying to block Syria.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said Wednesday's withdrawal "is a result of the good sense of the member states of the Asia group who determined that they were unwilling to give sufficient support to a country whose human rights record is deplorable."

"This election had become a referendum on Syria's violent suppression of protests, and Syria withdrew rather than face a resounding defeat," said Peggy Hicks, Human Rights Watch's global advocacy director.